Islam is like Judaism.
Lost me at the 4th word.
That’s gotta be a record.
Original title:
Challenging Radical Islam
An explanation of Islam’s relation to terrorism and violence
by John A. Azumah
January 2015
Has a similar structure to Judaism, but the antithesis of it.
Judaism invented ethical monotheism that strives to help man become better than yesterday.
Islam invented unethical, pagan, barbaric monotheism to help man become worse than yesterday.
The time for “explanations” of Muslim terrorism has long since passed. It comes off now, not as an explanation, but as an excuse.
Explaining it doesn’t quell the damage that’s already been done, nor does it ease the fears of threats made for the future.
IF, terrorism is someday defeated, and the world returns to peace, only then will we have a propensity to gather around a table and listen to the scholar-babble of “explanations”.
Until then, the immediate threat needs to be handled in the quickest and most efficient manner possible.
Interesting article, but I’d like to zero in on one point.
The author writes, “Those who argue that jihadi groups represent the ‘essence’ of Islam actually reflect a very Western way of thinking. Wittingly or unwittingly, they presume a scripturalist interpretation of Islam, imagining that we can explain Islamic terrorism by drawing a straight line between authoritative texts and the actions of jihadists. To prove their point, these Islam-is-the-problem critics tend to link specific acts of jihadi groups to a string of references from Islamic scripture, traditions, legal texts, and Muslim scholarly opinions. Perversely, this sola scriptura approach is no different from the jihadists’ own ‘Qur’an and sunna alone’ approach. The truth about religious lives is not so simple. The vast majority of Christians and Muslims don’t live by sola scriptura, or by Qur’an and sunna alone...”
The quran is not in the same league as any sayings or traditions in Islam. Nor is it analogous to Christian scripture, neither Old nor New Testament. Muslims regard the quran as a message direct from Heaven, not written by any human being. The illiterate Muhammad was merely the vehicle and is analogous to the Virgin Mary, via whom God conveyed His message. A pure (illiterate, virginal) vessel of the Word. In Christianity the message is the person of Jesus, in Islam the message is the quran. Imperfect humans made later contributions and all these are due honor but are not of themselves holy. Christians may interpret the scriptures, muslims may interpret the sunnah. But the perfection, the divinity of the quran, like the divinity of Jesus, is the core of the religion and beyond any discussion.
(For this reason, comparisons of the legitimacy of violence in the Bible with those in the quran are invalid.)
More BS.
Mr. Azumah writes as if he has read extensively in late Islamic literature but has not read the Koran or the Haditha.